Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. I.djvu/31

Rh of my country for the services I have rendered." But now Gen. Braddock was sent over from England with two regiments of regulars, and Washington did not hesitate to accept an appointment on his staff as a volunteer aide-de-camp. The prudent counsels that he gave Braddock before he set out on his ill-fated expedition, and often repeated along the road, were not followed; but Washington, notwithstanding a violent attack of fever, was with him on the bloody field of the Monongahela, behaving, as his fellow aide-de-camp, Col. Orne, testified, "with the greatest courage and resolution," witnessing at last Braddock s defeat and death, and being the only mounted officer not killed or disabled. "By the all-powerful dispensations of Providence," wrote he to his brother, "I have been protected beyond all human probability or expectation; for I had four bullets through my coat, and two horses shot under me, yet I escaped unhurt, although death was levelling my companions on every side." It fell to him by a striking coincidence—the chaplain being wounded—to read the funeral service at the burial of Braddock at the Great Meadows, the scene of his own capitulation the year before. In a sermon to one of the companies organized under the impulse of Braddock's defeat, and in view of the impending dangers of the country, the Rev. Samuel Davies, an eloquent and accomplished preacher, who, in